The Farm.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 37, 7 October 1871, Page 9

The Farm.

CONCEETE ELOOES.

Concrete floors are not only the best but they are the cheapest for dairies, kitchens, barns, and other buildings, and any of our veaders who may contemplate the formation of such floors will find much useful practical information in the following article taken from the “ Agicultural Gazette Taking every point into consideration, and judging it from a strictly practical stand-point, not merely from what our own experience in connection with it has shown us, but from what we have seen of it as put down by others, we have no hesitation in putting, concrete in the front rank of flooring materials, if not, indeed, at the head of or before all others, it is hard, durable, and capable of resisting all pressures likely to be put upon it, even if used in places where there is heavy cart or carriage traffic, and it may belaid with a perfectly uniform surface over any extent, and .without a single joint or break in its continuity. This last feature is of immense importance in apartments of farm buildings, where it is essential that the flooring surface can be easily cleaned and kept clean. Further while in the ease of nearly every material employed in the formation of floors, the gutters in the case of apartments for live stock have to be formed out of special blocks, the joints of which, in contiguity to the other material of which the floor is employed, are sources of endless trouble, which affords lodgements for filth, and which speedily become loose —in the case of concrete floors gutters both large and small, and, indeed, any form of indentation on the surface required, can be formed with the greatest of ease, and. at a very small portion of the cost of forming gutters in stone or earthenware. A concrete floor may indeed be termed a monolith,——a solid surface of stone, with no break or joint over the whole of it. The materials used in the formation or concrete floors are obtainable everywhere.. Clean, sharp sand, whether of river or sea, will make an excellent floor ; or if this cannot be obtained in sufficient quantity, broken bricks and the like, and “ breeze” from the iron and colliery works may be used, being passed through a mill in order to crush them into the condition of very small gravel. The cement used in Portland cement, and the proportions are three of the base, as sand, broken brick, &c., to one of the cement. The whole of the materials should be well mixed together in their dry condition, and water then added in quantity sufficient to allow of the concrete being spread easily like mortar. So much only of the materials should be mixed at a time as can be easily laid down while the mass remains in proper consistency. The more thoi'oughly the cement is incorporated with the base, as sand, &c.., the better 5 and if a large surface of flooring is to be laid down, it would be advisable to rig up a mixer, which could be done at no great expense If a clay pug-mill be on the premises, this may be used as a mixer of the materials with advantage. # . The only art required in the laying of the floor—if art it be, where carefulness alone is the requisite—is to make the junction between parts previously laid down and new parts, and this is not a difficult thing to do. If the joint happens to be a little rough higher at one point than another, a brick may be used to smooth down the protuerant part, this being used while the concrete is moderately soft. A brick or part of a brick is also a capital thing to round and finish off the corners of gutters, &c. . An important part of a concrete floor is the “ bottoming”—the material upon which the concrete rests as a base. This bottoming is made of broken stones or bricks of sufficient size to go through a 2 inch or 1£ inch ring ; they should be of as uniform a size as possible, and hard road metal forms a capital bottoming. The depth or thickness of the layer of stones, &c, should be, for floors four,. for roads at least six inches. The depth or thickness of the top layer of concrete forming the floor surface is two inches ; thus making the depth of the excavated part below the line of floor surface six inches in all. This depth should be marked or gauged off all round the apartment to be floored, a chaulk line indicating the floor level all round. The surface of the ground upon which the floor bottoming is to rest should be rammed over, to make it as firm and unyielding as possible. The stones should be carefully laid, and the depth kept quite uniform. In laying the concrete, the work should be commenced at one end of the room, and gradually brought forward j this will allow the

parts newly laid to be trodden upon. But should it be necessary, as it may be necessary in the case of a large room, or when the concrete laying has reached the centre of the room, to go over any of the newly laid surface, flat boards may be laid over the floor, upon which the workmen may walk. In cases where walking must be done, this is the best way to prevent marking the surface; and care should be taken that the boards have no projecting points on their under surface. As already said, the use of concrete as a flooring material permits of an easy formation of gutters, or any other form of depressed parts. Half-round gutters—that is, with semicircular bottoms —are very easily formed by using a timber gauge, the under side of which is made semicircular, of the same size as the gutter is intended to be, and this gauge is run along the concrete surface, the concrete being worked up to the sides, and the bottom being worked smooth by moving the gauge to and fro longitudinally before taking it out. The edges of gutters should nob be left with sharp corners as these are soon broken off, but the corners should be rounded off. This may be done when the concrete is partly set, by rubbing with a brick, but the corners may be formed rounded in the concrete itself by forming the underside of the gauge like an ogee moulding, the return concaves of which at the sides of the gauge will, of course, form rounded edges to the gutter. Where one gutter joins another gutter at right angles, one junction should be curved at the upper edges. This will be most quickly done by brick rubbing. If the whole surface of the floor is desired to be laid out with diamond shaped indentations or in parallel grooves, these can be very easily formed by timber gauges, made out of half-inch thick stuff. The roughing of a floor in this way is noc necessary in order to give the animals passing over it a good foothold, as the natural surface of the concrete gives this readily enough. There is, however, one advantage in forming parallel grooves oAer the surface of the floor, as these form small drains by which the water used for cleaning purposes can run easily to the centre gutter. The floor should not, in the case of apartments used for stock, as stables and cow-houses, be uniformly level, but should be made with its two sides inclined towards the centre gutter. Thus the floor of the stables should slope gently from the head or manger to the front gutter j the dunging passage sloping the contrary way, from the outer wall to the central gutter. This part will be all the better if laid with parallel grooves, running from the outer wall to the central gutter. The depth of these grooves should not exceed half an inch, and the breadth the same; and the distance between the grooves from fourt o six inches. MANGELS AS FOOD FOE SHEEP. A correspondent of the “ Mark Lane Express” gives the following account of his experience in the use of mangels as food for sheep: — One of the most interesting parts of farming is, that ono learns a wrinkle or two almost every year. Last year 1 had au enormous crop of mangel wurzels, and although I kept my usual head of stock, they appeared to make scarcely any impression upon my store. I bought fatting cattle contrary to my usual custom (for I am a breeder of stock), high as they were in price; for I could nob bear the thought of my orange globes becoming a mass of rotten pulp. I advertised one hundred ton for sale ; but instead of selling tons I only succeeded in selling a few hundredweight. To give an idea of tbs state of mine, wo were in and a friend of mine called, and on looking over the stock, said to my heardsman, “ Well, John, how aro yau getting on ?” “ All well, sir; only we are distracted about them mangels.” I resigned myself to what appeared to be my inevitable fate—that I should have to spread my beauties over the land for manure, never dreaming that when my ewes and lambs were turned out on fresh fields and pastures new, they would look at a mangel; but to my surprise and delight, they actually prefer the mangels. They were lambed down on a twenty acre grassfield, where I kept them .eating mangels and hay as long as I dared, and when I opened the gates into an adjoining forty acre field, that had not had a hoof on it since November I expected they would not have returned for a considerable period—at least until the old pasture had been refreshed; but, to my surprise, though they wandered about during the day time, they invariably returned to pick up any shells of mangels that might be left. Seeing this, I ordered the supply to be kept up, and one hundred and twenty ewes, with their lambs, consumed a cartload every twenty-four hours, so completely that they did not leave a piece as big as half-a-crown ; and the lambs were as partial to them as their mothers. Wrinkle No 2. —I used to give my ewes half a pound of oats whilst their lambs were with them, and I invariably found that many of them became ragged, and lost a portion of their wool from their backs and shoulders. My supply of roots being so large, I have this season nob given any oats. The result is that they have scarcely shed an ounce of wool. Wrinkle No. 3. —Now, as I have found out that you may grow on the same field, year after year, mangels, not only without deterioration, but with manifest increase (having grown them for the last ten years on a small field of two acres), I grow more and more mangels.

THE FRUITING- OF SEEDLING TREES. At a recent meeting of the Eoyal Horticultural Society, Dr Hogg read the following communication from the Eev. W. Kingsley, relating to the fruiting of seedling irees, which will be read with interest by those engaged in raising new varieties of fruits : Everyone knows how very long is the time between sowing the seed of a fruit tree and getting fruit from it, so that few men of fifty

years of life have the courage to propagate seedlings. I believe the time may be shortened most materially, and that a very few words will explain the correct way of growing seedling fruit trees. I have been led to the idea by the difficulty I have had in getting some grafted trees into bearing, and by observing that precisely the same sort of growth occurred in some trees that had originated in suckers from old ungrafted trees. In almost all these cases, whether apple, pear, plum, peach, or orange, the wood was thorny ; and though I cut back, and used the cuttings for scions, all had the same thorny and fruitless character.

However, in experimenting upon a set of seeding peaches, some were allowed to grow wild, some steadily pinched in, some cut in closely and pinched, and some trained as single rods ; all these last fruited as soon as the shoot got beyond the thorny part of the stem. It then occurred to me that it was only necessary to get beyond this part of the growth as quickly as possible. This is done by encouraging the growth of the young seeding to a Bingle upright shoot, and then using the point of that shoot as a scrion on a strong stock ; then the shoots from this scion is to be again trained at full length, and its point again used as a scion. In this way a shoot may be got having buds 20 feet or more from the root in a couple of years. The old seedling trees may thus be grafted with the scions from themselves, but it would be better to graft them in the third year with a scion taken from an intermediate grafted tree. It may be necessary to stop the leader to be used as a scion by the end of August, to ensure its ripening, but this will not seriously affect its nature. I can speak from experience of the success of the process in the case of peaches and oranges, and some plums ; pears and apples I have not yet tried. But I may also mention that I have in this way got over the difficulty with thorny pear trees.

The trees that I could not get to fruit had been grafted with scions taken off too near the root, the sorts being new ones. By selecting the scions near the root, or far form it, a grafted tree would be produced that would bear only after a long interval or quickly, according to the gardener’s will. At any rate, what has been said shows the importance of choosing the points of leading shoots as the scions for forming dwarf trees. I should very much prefer having some independent experiments tried to trusting entirely to iny own, and therefore hope some one or more of the Royal Horticultural Society will take the matter up ; and in the meantime any discussion this statement may provoke will be of service to horticultural science.” MISCELLANEOUS. There is vast difference in the exhaustive powers of crops; onions parsnips, and carrots are plain livers, and can be raised on the same ground year after year. Onions, and perhaps all garden vegetables of a nonstarchy nature and composition, require loamy soil and high manuring. Beets ought not to be planted successively on the same soil; they become knotty and dwarfed. Oats are immense feeders, and sap the land of its nutrition faster and more completely than rye or wheat. For the general run of garden table vegetables, rotation and rich manuring are necessary. Many energetic men fall in pastoral pursuits because they undertake too much, and their business is too much spread out. Speaking of such a ease, a successful stockowner lately said. “ A’s failure was not unexpected by me. It has been looked for for three years and the only wonder is that it did not come sooner. He has been carrying on some time merely for the glory of a big business, and has been constantly losing money, as any man will whose business is so large that it requires a regiment of hired men to superintend the work and handle the cash. No man ever succeeded at farming, stock-raising, and speculating all combined, on a scale so large that he could do nothing himself but appoint agents and give them money • Green corn for fodder should not be cut or fed off until it begins to tassel. Before that stage is reached, it contains to little nutriment for its bulk —that is, too small an amount of the flesh-forming element, and too much woody fibre and water to make it valuable. But when the ear begins to form it becomes exceedingly valuable. The total amount of nutrition of corn in that stage exceeds that in clover, peas, vetches, oats, lucerne, cabbage, beet, or carrot. The great study of a dairy-keeper should be to mingle all the elements of food in proper proportion, as any excess of a particular element passes unutilized by the animal. A very intelligent and successful dairyman, speaking of the results of mixing a portion of dry food with grass or clover, says :—“ In our experiments we were first led to mix 25 per cent of straw with succulent clover in spring for the purpose of absorbing the super-abundant water and preventing bloating, while the cows were becoming accustomed to this juicy food. The straw accomplished the purpose admirably, and finding the quantity of mik quite satisfactory, we were led to note the result on quantity of milk when the straw was omitted , and the cows full fed on clover alone. We were surprised at first to find little or no increase of milk, and this led us to an examination of the porportion of nitrogenous and non-nitrogenous constituents of clover and Btraw. We fed 801 b of green clover and 81b of oat straw, cut and mixed together. This would give of nitrogenous, or muscle and cheese-forming food, 3771 b, and of carbonaceous, or heat and fat-forming food, 12.601 b, all digestable. The nitrogenous matter in 301 b of milk does not exceed lib, and the carbonaceous, 2.601 b j therefore there would be abundant surplus in this ration to sustain respiration and supply waste of system. We have thus used a portion of cut straw with green clover in soiling cows for many years, and believe this is an excellent way of turning surplus straw to good account.